I have a question for the Slashdot community: Does this shooting alter your opinion on the issue of gun ownership rights vs. gun control laws? Even a little, in either direction?

Please note: My question is NOT, what is your opinion now; rather, it is, how much did your opinion CHANGE?

We have a large enough community here that I think the numbers will be statistically meaningful.

Thanks, all.

Killed in battle by a Klingon D'Har Master, who considered me to be an honorable opponent.

From the abstract:

"The act of measurement bridges the quantum and classical worlds by projecting a superposition of possible states into a single (probabilistic) outcome. The timescale of this 'instantaneous'process can be stretched using weak measurements usuch that it takes the form of a gradual random walk towards a final state. Remarkably, the interim measurement record is sufficient to continuously track and steer the quantum state using feedback..."

The way I read this, they aren't claiming they prevented collapse, nor that they can predict which state it will collapse to; rather, they have (1) increased the time of the collapse of the wave function (via feedback) and (2) been able to "watch" the electron collapse to whichever state it goes to. [N.B.: I am totally open to correction. I haven't paid the $32 for a copy of the paper.]

So, no Heisenberg compensator here.

You need to install a multi-layer object made of two (or more) materials that transmit sound waves by very different amounts; this is known as an impedance mismatch. It Can Be Shown that the incident sound waves will be strongly reflected at the mismatched boundary. In this context, double-paned windows (thus layers of glass and air) will provide the mismatch you need.

And, as another poster mentioned, this will provide good thermal insulation, as a bonus.

Oblig: http://what-if.xkcd.com/6/

Are you really this naive about technology? In five years, 3-d printers will be sold at Wal-Mart; in six years, printable plastics capable of withstanding the explosive forces involved will be sold one of your "myriad websites". Then, everyone will be able to print out as many COMPLETE guns as they want, in one-tenth the time it would take to mill just the lower receiver.

(Not to mention that having access to milling equipment is one thing; having sufficient skill to use it to make a gun part that won't explode the first time you fire the gun is quite another. But 3-d printing a perfect gun will be as simple as pressing Ctrl-P.

I've been teaching freshman-level physics, both algebra and calculus based, for about 15 years. My take (warning: generalities and averages ahead):

Coming into the class, the algebra students absolutely do not care about the theory of the subject. They do not see the beauty of the subject the way that you and I do, or that (to a lesser extend) the calculus-based students do. They have two goals: 1) They want to pass the class, because it is required for their major; and 2) they want to learn the material as a collection of hopefully useful information for their future careers.

Thus, if you can make the information you are presenting be (or appear to be) relevant to them, they will be more engaged with you, and with the class. I don't know what the statistics equivalent of kicking a ball off a cliff and calculating how far from the base of the cliff the ball lands, but whatever it is, I urge you to avoid that at all costs. Find some other topic, or example, that will matter to them. If you present the material intending for them to admire the beauty of the subject, entirely for itself, you will have a room full of bored and sullen (and underperforming) students.

This is NOT to say that these students are less good than the students who take the calculus-based courses; in my experience, they are just as strong academically and intellectually--and in many cases better. They just (again, on average) have very different motivations for taking any particular math or science class.

(If you are lucky, you may get one of them to change majors to a natural science. It's happened to me a few times--a really great feeling!)

Good luck!

+1 Interesting

To quote Robert Heinlein: "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig."

So, in yesterday's story about predicting the collapse of civilization, multiple posters snarked about how convenient it is to make predictions about what will happen 30 years from now, 'cause no one will remember you made those predictions--so you'll never be called to account for your oh-so-incorrect doomsday predictions.

I now calmly await for yesterday's posters to issue "I can see now that I was wrong" statements.

No, because the multiple predictions are not random, the way thrown darts are. This is Science 101. Multiple models are proposed to explain and/or predict an observable phenomenon. The model that makes the the most accurate predictions gains credence over the others.

This doesn't completely address your concern, but I did run across this statement in the iBooks Author helpfile:

"Note: In iBooks Author, video and audio files used in HTML widgets are not DRM (digital rights management) protected."

FWIW

The interactivity is far, far more than simple indexing and glossary-lookup. I downloaded Apple's "Yellow Submarine" book a month or two ago. (Looking back on it, it's obvious that they were putting blood in the water for iBooks Author.) Every page had interactive elements; I could tap on an image and a relevant song would play, or a video, or a picture that was interactive, not static. If I recall correctly, the iPad would have read the book out loud.

I've downloaded iBooks Author and am looking at it now. You can add interactive images, image galleries, movies, audio, review questions, Keynote presentations(!), interactive 3D objects, and HTML.

I'm a college physics instructor; I am salivating at the potential of this for a physics textbook. What if my students could, for example, tap on the each of the terms in a conservation of momentum equation (as an interactive graphical element) and the book would tell them the physical meaning of each symbol, and then run a movie showing (say) a collision of two objects (elastic? inelastic? 1-d? 2-d?). Or have a 3-d plot of an electric field that they could rotate right there in their textbook? How about have the relevant (and CURRENT) Wikipedia article pop up INSIDE their textbook? Did a topic get out of date ("hey, we found the Higgs a week after you published your textbook!") No problem, a quick update and the new info is in the book!

I agree with another poster, at this time I cannot justify requiring an iPad (or anything technological that my school doesn't provide), but I definitely see this style of textbook--on whatever platform--as the future. As long as e-texts are simply photonic versions of paper books, I see little value in them. But add this interactivity, and...the possibilities to really transform student learning are breathtaking.

From Google Translate: "Customer feedback" --> "Internet shitstorm"

"Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman.

Or, "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

Hell, anything by Neil Gaiman.